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Saturday, March 21, 2015

This is a truth that every one should know.

This year’s budget write-off in customs duty on gold, diamonds and
jewellery (all aam aadmi items, of course) is Rs 75,592 crore. That’s
well over twice the “record” amount allocated to the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. As Prof Jayati Ghosh points
out, the MNREGA has given billions of person-days of work to tens of
millions of poor rural households this past decade. It has been
allocated Rs 34,699 crore. (You can find the gold figure in the Union
Budget 2015-16. Just go to the annexure marked Statement of Revenue
Foregone; http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2015-16/statrevfor/annex12.pdf.)
This giveaway on gold and precious stones in fact accounts for fully a
fourth of all customs duty exemptions. Overall, the budget for
agriculture has fallen by more than Rs 5,000 crore compared to last
year. The concessions on customs duty on gold, however, have gone up by
more than five times that amount in the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, the feeding frenzy at the corporate trough has crossed the Rs
42 trillion mark this year (or US $678 billion, if you’re among those
whose overseas stash the Narendra Modi government has pledged to bring
back to our sacred shores). Yup, 42 trillion. As in 12 zeroes. Relief
for the corporate needy (and other well-off hungry) rec­orded in this
year’s budget comes to Rs 5,89,285.2 crore. Or Rs 5.49 lakh-crore ($88
billion roughly) if you skip personal income tax which benefits a
relatively wider group of people. And the freebies adding up to that
total are just those under a mere three heads: corporate income tax,
excise duty and customs duty. The Rs 5.49 lakh-crore figure brings the
bills for the 10-year orgy to Rs 42.08 trillion. The public pays for the
party. The guests enjoy anonymity.
Did I say 10-year orgy? It’s gone on much longer, actually. Just that
the government started publishing revenue forgone data only from
2005-06. How much would the total come to if we had the data for earlier
years? Oh, well, never mind. This is big enough. Rs 5.49 lakh-crore is
the biggest ever instalment in corporate karza maafi in all the years
for which the numbers exist. It is also close to 140 per cent higher
than the giveaways of 2005-06, the year we started getting this data
(see Table 1).Write-Offs For The Well-Off Touch
Rs 42,000,000,000,000

Revenue Forgone On Gold, Diamonds & Jewellery
2005-06 to 2014-15
This year’s write-offs, though, come in new clothes. Take, for instance,
the corporate income tax handouts. Till the 2013-14 budget, the table
listing these was called: major tax expenditures on corporate taxpayers.
This year the budget has caught up with the semantics of the elite.
It’s now called revenue impact of major incentives on corporate
taxpayers (emphasis added). Oh, goody. That makes it all fine then.
These are incentives, not grabouts. Don’t crib.
Union finance minister Arun Jaitley told a gushing TV anchor last year
that he “hoped” there would be no return to wasteful subsidies under the
NDA government. He added that it depended on the situation as it
unfolded. So here’s how it unfolded. Corporate income tax written off in
the statement of revenue foregone of the last UPA budget was Rs 57,793
crore. In the first year of the Modi regime, it was Rs 62,399
crore—about eight per cent higher. It will likely be even higher since
this year’s figure is still an “estimated” or provisional one.
But even going by the provisional figure, it means on income tax alone,
the corporate world in 2014-15 received write-offs of Rs 171 crore every
24 hours. Or over seven crore every 60 minutes. Add to that the Rs 1.84
lakh-crore in excise duty waived and Rs 3.01 lakh-crore knocked off in
customs duty and you have your Rs 5.49 lakh-crore.
A large part of the trillions in NPAs our banks foster was run up by the wealthy who can’t be named due to secrecy laws.
The media reported that Arun Jaitley has given the rural employment
programme it’s biggest boost ever. What Jaitley has said is that he
would add another Rs 5,000 crore…if there is tax buoyancy. Not so much a
promise as a possibility based on other possibilities. Besides, the Rs
34,699 crore allocated for the MNREGA is actually less, not more. The
central government already owes the states around Rs 6,000 crore for
this year, which they have not paid. So, as Prof Ghosh points out, the
new amount for next year will really be less than Rs 30,000 crore. In
any case, the MNREGA funding being capped at the level (around Rs 33,000
crore) it has been for three high-inflation years has a different
meaning altogether. But it would be wrong to pin this on Jaitley alone.
The wrecking of this vital programme for the rural poor was pioneered
earlier. Take a bow, P. Chidambaram.
You can run the MNREGA (on present allocation levels) for over 121 years
on Rs 42 trillion. But of course we won’t, with a prime minister who
makes a point of displaying his utter contempt for the programme on the
floor of Parliament.
You can sustain the food subsidy at present levels of funding for 34
years on the Rs 42 trillion. You could undo some of the most savage
cuts—to health and child-related subjects for instance. There is, as the
HAQ—Centre for Child Rights points out, “a 22 per cent reduction in
health-related sche­mes for children”, and worse, “a 25 per cent
reduction in overall education programmes for children….”
But the ‘statement of revenue foregone’ (which should actually be spelt
‘forgone’) reflects a gigantic increase in corporate freebies, in
pampering the plutocrats. Customs duties knocked off on gold and
precious stones account for more than 10 per cent of all revenue
foregone in 2014-15. Take the 10-year period since 2005-06 and the
amount lost on customs write-offs on gold, diamonds and jewellery comes
to Rs 4.3 trillion. Curb the kids, grow the gold, is it?
There is something quite sickening about this Rs 42 trillion orgy.
Something equally nauseous about corporate media quislings who rush to
defend the “incentives”. There will be those who insist that these are
‘notional’ or “not handouts”. That “this is for everybody. All benefit”.
Fact: the overwhelming share of these
incentives/subsidies/write-offs/handouts go to the very well-off. That
much, nothing can hide. And remember this: these handouts thr­ough
budgetary baksheesh for billionaires are only one part of many such
processes through which enormous amounts of public money are given away
to the rich and famous (but for the banks and media, they are mostly
anonymous).
The second point: all these giveaways listed in the tables are only a
part of the total handouts beyond the budget, details of which are still
invisible to the public. Like, for example, the trillions of rupees in
‘non-performing assets’ (NPAs) with the public sector banks. A very
large part of this was run up by wealthy people whose names, it is
argued, cannot be divulged under “secrecy laws”. The corporate media are
happy to go along with that. Editors have learnt painfully that
pursuing it can sometimes cause embarrassment to their owners. There’s
an ethical rationalisation too. Banking laws, privacy, confidentiality.
Never mind that when it’s the less privileged, banks run advertisements
in new­spapers (as those in AP did in the past decade), naming petty
defaulters and carrying details of public auctions of their gold
ornaments to recover a few thousand rupees. No banking ethics and
confidentiality for them. The media are okay with that, although they
mostly stayed silent when the All India Bank Employees Association
(AIBEA) named several hundreds of bigger defaulters late last year. That
silence goes on till one of them gets to be such a problem it can’t be
swept under the carpet without creating a large and ugly bump in it
(that’s when a Vijay Mallya finds himself getting bad press).
Union MoS for finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply to a question
in Parliament that NPAs had gone up (alm­ost trebled) “during the last
few years”. The amount, Sinha said, was over Rs 2 trillion. Then there’s
an even larger amount tucked away in ‘corporate debt restructuring’.
And quite a bit more in what are politely called ‘stalled projects’
(soon to grow up to be NPAs). Estimates of this kind of scamming run to
many trillions of rupees (a lot more than the $88 billion budget
baksheesh). Then there’s land grabbed from thousands of farmers and
transferred at dirt cheap rates to large corporations. And other
subsidies. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Just look at
this mob and their lifetime meal tickets. Boy, what a menu they have on
the table!Courtesy: psaintha.org, March 16, 2015

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan has said he hopes that all territory seized by
Islamist militant group Boko Haram will be retaken within a month.

"They are getting weaker and weaker by the day," he told the BBC.
But he admitted the security forces had been slow to respond to the insurgents' initial advance in north-east Nigeria.
Nigeria's army has recently claimed a series of victories
over the militants. The violence has killed more than 15,500 people
since 2012.Abducted girls 'alive'
In an exclusive interview with the BBC's Will Ross in the
capital Abuja, President Jonathan said: "I'm very hopeful that it will
not take us more than a month to recover the old territories that
hitherto have been in their [Boko Haram's] hands."

Nigerian government troops recently recaptures several towns, the military says

Earlier this week, the Nigerian military said the militants no
longer controlled any urban centres in Yobe and Adamawa - two out of the
three worst-affected states in the north-east.
The military also pledged that Borno state, the birthplace of Boko Haram, would soon be freed.
However, President Jonathan admitted in the interview that
the authorities "never expected that they [Boko Haram] would build up
that kind of capacity".
He added: "We underestimated their external influence. Since
after the civil war we've not fought any war, we don't manufacture
weapons, so we had to look for help to re-equip our army and the air
force."

Analysis: Will Ross, BBC News, Abuja
President Jonathan may have faced huge criticism at home and
abroad for his handling of the insecurity in the north-east but he seems
unwilling to concede any mistakes have been made.
Mr Jonathan clearly inherited a military beset by corruption
and one which for decades has demonstrated an extraordinary inability to
build up a decent array of weaponry - hence the recent scramble for
military hardware including helicopters and tanks as well as the
involvement of troops from neighbouring countries.
His assessment of the Boko Haram crisis is perhaps a little
closer to the mark than the euphoric PR statements that are sent out on
behalf of Nigeria's military suggesting this is a won war.
Yes, some jihadists have been killed in battle, he told me,
but many have fled - either over the borders or into Sambisa Forest and
the Mandara Mountains, whilst some he says have melted back into towns.
They may no longer control much territory but the Boko Haram crisis grew too deep to disappear in a hurry.

Mr Jonathan said that newly acquired military equipment, as
well as co-operation with neighbouring countries, had helped push the
jihadists out of towns and villages.
He added that while many militants had poured across the
country's borders, he thought some had retreated into a stronghold in
north-eastern Nigeria known as the Sambisa Forest.
The president also said he believed the 219 schoolgirls
abducted from Chibok by Boko Haram last year were still alive, adding
that the authorities continued their search for them.
"I believe we'll get them," the president added.
The interview comes just days before Nigerians are due to vote in presidential elections.
Despite stiff competition from the opposition, Mr Jonathan said: "I'll surely win."
BBC

One of Tunisia’s most wanted men, a senior commander of ISIS
militants in Libya, has been killed fighting with Libyan forces near the
city of Sirte, Tunisian security sources said on Tuesday.
The
death of Tunisian militant Ahmed Rouissi, who was fighting in Libya’s
ISIS ranks, confirms the growing importance of foreign fighters in the
Libyan conflict, where two rival governments and armed forces battle for
control.
Western governments and Libya’s North African neighbors
are increasingly worried about Islamist militants, especially ISIS
allies, extending their foothold in the chaotic country just across the
Mediterranean from Europe.
“According to the information we have,
we can say Rouissi has been killed in the most recent fighting in
Sirte,” a Tunisian security source said.
Libya is in chaos with
two rival governments - one internationally recognized, the other set up
in Tripoli after its forces took over the capital - that are fighting
for control four years after a civil war ousted Muammar Qaddafi.
In
the turmoil, militants allied to ISIS this year have claimed a string
of high-profile attacks targeting foreigners, including an assault on a
luxury hotel in Tripoli, the storming of oilfields and kidnapping of oil
workers.
Rouissi was a top member of Tunisia's Ansar al-Sharia extremist group branded as terrorists by Washington.
Tunisian
officials believe he was the mastermind in the murders of two Tunisian
opposition leaders in 2013 that plunged the country into crisis.
He
later joined ISIS in Libya and had been running training and
recruitment operations with other foreign fighters there, according to
the Tunisian security source.
Tunisians make up one of the
largest contingents of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, but more
recently militants have been sending militants to take part in the
conflict in Tunisia's North African neighbor Libya.
Tunisia also
said on Tuesday it had dismantled a recruiting cell sending militants to
fight in Libya and arrested dozens in part of tighter security and
border controls to counter Islamist militants.
“Security officers
and the army arrested ten terrorists trying to sneak into Libya to join
the armed groups in Libya,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The
communique said security forces also dismantled four terrorist cells
that were recruiting for Libya and arrested 22 more suspects in those
operations. Alarabiya

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

"It’s not that everything is bad, but on the core issues of the idea
of India, on secularism, he does not respect the cultures of others"

While his policies on Sri Lanka and China are
commendable, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stance on “core issues”
reflects intolerance and stands in variance with the idea of India, the
Chairman of Kasturi and Sons Ltd, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, N. Ram, said here on Tuesday.

“It’s
not that everything is bad, but on the core issues of the idea of
India, on secularism, policy towards minorities, Article 370, on banning
beef-eating, he does not respect the cultures of others,” Mr. Ram said
during a panel discussion on “Minorities and the media: at a crossroads”
at Maulana Azad National Urdu University. He spoke of the need for the
Muslim community to introspect on issues such as gender equality and
women’s education. Mr. Ram wondered why reaction to an increase in the
country’s Muslim population “bordered on paranoia.”

Prominent
journalist Shekhar Gupta faulted the secular media for having taken up
extreme positions in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots in 2002, as a
result of which they found themselves lost after the Lok Sabha elections
last year.

Columnist Swapan Dasgupta said secular parties lived in denial of the “half-truths” in society.

That Indian Muslims were a harassed lot was “established wisdom” in the Pakistani media, said Editor-in-Chief of Pakistan’s Friday Times, Najam Sethi.

Mr.
Ram, chief guest at the inaugural session, called for in-depth study
into the profiling of Muslims and the issues connected with them by the
media, since an impression had gained ground that there was stereotyping
of the community. He said the Urdu University was highly qualified to
take up the study and if any cooperation was required, the Asian College
of Journalism, Chennai would be willing to offer it.